typography – Dezeenhttps://www.dezeen.com
architecture and design magazineSat, 10 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.6.1Wooden machine produces "handwritten" version of Bodoni typefacehttps://www.dezeen.com/2016/12/05/sooji-lee-design-academy-eindhivon-graduate-how-to-write-bodoni-lowercase-typeface-machine/
https://www.dezeen.com/2016/12/05/sooji-lee-design-academy-eindhivon-graduate-how-to-write-bodoni-lowercase-typeface-machine/#respondMon, 05 Dec 2016 06:00:48 +0000https://admin.dezeen.com/?p=1014815Design Academy Eindhoven graduate Sooji Lee has created a hand-operated machine that painstakingly rewrites the Bodoni typeface in lowercase. Lee deconstructed the lowercase letters of the Bodoni type – a serif face created in the late eighteenth century – and reduced it to 26 individual elements. This included the serifs that form the top and bottom

Lee deconstructed the lowercase letters of the Bodoni type – a serif face created in the late eighteenth century – and reduced it to 26 individual elements.

This included the serifs that form the top and bottom of the alphabet and the stems and bowls that make up the rounded letters such as o, e, c and b.

Neither a or g contain any elements that overlap with other letters, so were created as standalone elements.

The designer then built a pedal-operated wooden machine complete with a pen, along with a set of "maps" the operator follows to recreate each Bodoni letter.

"Typefaces are really close to our daily life, but actually we cannot realise them without a computer because they are originally invented for the purpose of mass printing production," said the designer.

"We usually say 'I'm writing' when we type, even though it is not an actual behaviour of writing but just pushing the button. I decided, literally, to write a certain typeface."

Recreating a single letter a with the writing tool requires 74 strokes, 60 curves, and two different widths and directions of the pen. Lee spent two hours writing the

Lee spent two hours writing the a on her first attempt – which took 43 pedal steps – but says with practice she's reduced the time to 30 minutes.

"We can reproduce an infinite quality of identical letters of a with the push of a button," she said. "The letter a in my project takes a long time, and the results will have all different shapes, depending on the speed of the hand and the spread of ink."

]]>https://www.dezeen.com/2016/12/05/sooji-lee-design-academy-eindhivon-graduate-how-to-write-bodoni-lowercase-typeface-machine/feed/0Donald Trump's handwriting turned into Tiny Hand typefacehttps://www.dezeen.com/2016/10/21/donald-trump-tiny-hand-typeface-font-design-mark-davis-us-election-2016/
https://www.dezeen.com/2016/10/21/donald-trump-tiny-hand-typeface-font-design-mark-davis-us-election-2016/#commentsFri, 21 Oct 2016 13:19:47 +0000http://admin.dezeen.com/?p=993168BuzzFeed designer Mark Davis has made a freely available font version of US presidential candidate Donald Trump's handwriting, and used it to annotate a Dezeen article. The Tiny Hand typeface recreates Trump's distinctive handwritten style, from the strangely angular Js to the dramatically curved Bs, Ds and Gs. Davis has designed several different versions of

]]>BuzzFeed designer Mark Davis has made a freely available font version of US presidential candidate Donald Trump's handwriting, and used it to annotate a Dezeen article.

The Tiny Hand typeface recreates Trump's distinctive handwritten style, from the strangely angular Js to the dramatically curved Bs, Ds and Gs. Davis has designed several different versions of each letter, to recreate the haphazard nature of Trump's scrawl, including a particularly unusual spiky B.

"Donald writes in a distinctive way – he holds his pen so the edge is 90°, where most people hold theirs at 45°," said Davis. "Hs letters are remarkably wide, but even more interesting is that the tops and bottoms of his letters are the heaviest parts."

"When I tried to create characters for the font that I couldn't find in samples he wrote, I busted out a sharpie and tried to 'be Trump'."

Trump is known for covering printouts of articles about himself in handwritten notes, often with derogatory comments about journalists, or the statements made. A 2011 Vanity Fair blog prompted additions such as "Oh really!" and "Not allowed".

"The search yielded several examples of Trump's... eccentric handwriting style," he said. "With only a cursory search – and more focused keywords – I was able to find other examples of his handwriting."

"Trump's notes, written to friends and enemies alike, were almost always written at an angle, scrawled on top of printouts of articles from the internet... I was struck both by the peculiar delivery of the notes, but also by the idiosyncratic way Trump writes the alphabet."

Referring back to these images, BuzzFeed commissioned graphic designer Mark Davis, who previously worked at Font Bureau, to transform them into a complete typeface.

Davis has also used Tiny Hand to mock-up Dezeen's own version of Trump's handwritten comments, which reads: "Dezeen – wrong!", and includes a signature which is also part of the font.

]]>https://www.dezeen.com/2016/10/21/donald-trump-tiny-hand-typeface-font-design-mark-davis-us-election-2016/feed/1Google and Monotype collaborate on font that spans all written languagehttps://www.dezeen.com/2016/10/06/google-monotype-noto-font-biggest-typeface-all-written-language/
https://www.dezeen.com/2016/10/06/google-monotype-noto-font-biggest-typeface-all-written-language/#respondThu, 06 Oct 2016 17:22:34 +0000http://admin.dezeen.com/?p=984712International font company Monotype has worked with Google to create one typeface that can be used by everyone in the world, writing in any language. The two companies describe the font family – named Noto – as one of the biggest typography projects ever undertaken. The result of more than five years' work, Noto covers

]]>International font company Monotype has worked with Google to create one typeface that can be used by everyone in the world, writing in any language.

The two companies describe the font family – named Noto – as one of the biggest typography projects ever undertaken.

The result of more than five years' work, Noto covers more than 800 languages and 100 written scripts. And work on it will continue into the future to add scripts that are currently incompatible with computers.

Numbers, emoji, symbols and musical notation are also included in the typeface, which comes in multiple serif and sans-serif styles of up to eight weights.

Noto is designed to eliminate "tofu" – the square boxes that appear in place of text when a font is not available on the device, so-called because they look like blocks of bean curd.

The typeface is said to realise Google's dream of seeing "no more tofu".

Google and Monotype claim Noto will not only help people to communicate across the world, it will assist to preserve information written in endangered languages.

"Even though we prioritise widely used languages, we still want to support other languages, even if there are no people still speaking them," said Google product manager Xiangye Xiao. "There are some characters you can only see on stones."

"If you don't move them to the web, over time those stones will become sand and we'll never be able to recover those drawings or that writing."

Google and Monotype are sharing Noto under an open font licence, meaning it is free to use, modify and distribute. Designers and developers are invited to adapt the typeface.

Work on Noto will be ongoing to keep up with updates to the Unicode Standard – the computing industry standard for encoding text so that it can be read consistently across machines.

When Google and Monotype began their project in 2011, Unicode 6.0 had just been released. The standard is now up to version 9.0, and the companies will continue to work together to add scripts from each new standard to the Noto library.

"I feel that looking into the future of digital communications, Google Noto is going to be the go-to design for people to be using to communicate across multiple cultures and societies," said Monotype's creative type director, Steve Matteson.

]]>https://www.dezeen.com/2016/10/06/google-monotype-noto-font-biggest-typeface-all-written-language/feed/0Mathieu Tremblin replaces graffiti with typographic translationshttps://www.dezeen.com/2016/08/08/mathieu-tremblin-graffiti-typography-graphic-design-tag-clouds-france/
https://www.dezeen.com/2016/08/08/mathieu-tremblin-graffiti-typography-graphic-design-tag-clouds-france/#commentsMon, 08 Aug 2016 05:00:36 +0000http://admin.dezeen.com/?p=947595French artist Mathieu Tremblin has translated scrawled graffiti into legible typography, as part of his Tag Clouds project (+ slideshow). Tremblin uses stencils to convert each graffitied signature into precise lettering. He applies the same typeface for each collection of tags and keeps their original positioning. The pieces, which resemble word clouds, set out to make the signatures of

]]>French artist Mathieu Tremblin has translated scrawled graffiti into legible typography, as part of his Tag Clouds project (+ slideshow).

Tremblin uses stencils to convert each graffitied signature into precise lettering. He applies the same typeface for each collection of tags and keeps their original positioning.

The pieces, which resemble word clouds, set out to make the signatures of graffiti artists more readable, thereby encouraging passersby to take more notice of them.

"It shows the analogy between the physical tag and the virtual tag, both in form and in substance," said the artist. "Like keywords, which are markers of net surfing, graffiti are markers of urban drifting."

In his process, the artist first covers the original tags, which are often hastily spray-painted onto walls.

He replicates the colours of the signatures and replaces graffiti faces with emoticon versions formed using punctuation.

Tag Clouds relates to an earlier project by Tremblin, which similarly replaced graffiti writers' signatures with a legible version. In that instance, he used blue type, referencing hyperlink text often found online.

The artist's approach goes against generally accepted graffiti etiquette, which frowns on the practice of covering another artist's work.

"Spontaneous graffiti writing became the ugly duckling of art in the city," the artist said. "With Tag Clouds, the idea is to make a tribute to spontaneous writing, in order that inhabitants accepts its visual presence by reading it."

]]>https://www.dezeen.com/2016/08/08/mathieu-tremblin-graffiti-typography-graphic-design-tag-clouds-france/feed/1Pentagram brings Mastercard into the digital age with pared-back logo redesignhttps://www.dezeen.com/2016/07/15/pentagram-brings-mastercard-into-the-digital-age-with-pared-back-logo-redesign/
https://www.dezeen.com/2016/07/15/pentagram-brings-mastercard-into-the-digital-age-with-pared-back-logo-redesign/#commentsFri, 15 Jul 2016 20:00:04 +0000http://admin.dezeen.com/?p=937063Design agency Pentagram has created a new logo and visual identity for Mastercard, the credit card company's first branding redesign in 20 years. The new design retains the two overlapping red and yellow circles, but swaps the stripes in the central portion for a block orange colour. The bold white text that spelled the US

Although Mastercard's corporate branch had a logo refresh in 2006, the company has stuck with the same public design since 1996.

The logo has remained largely unchanged since Mastercard was founded in 1966, however the new update aims to help bring the company into the digital age as more card transactions are done online and via apps.

"Everything has changed in the past 20 years," Pentagram partner Michael Bierut told FastCoDesign. "There was a lot of screw tightening and design tinkering happening [with the logo] in the first 30 years of the company. Then they almost got frozen in 1996."

"We took their DNA and went through this process of distillation," he added. "With each wave of simplification it felt sharper cleaner and more flexible."

The logo continues the trend for flat design, which has been adopted by companies like Instagram, Uber – replacing skeumorphic graphics that aim to emulate real-world objects on digital screens.